Melbourne, Australia; 9 March 2012: Starpharma Holdings Limited (ASX:SPL, OTCQX:SPHRY) today announced the appointment of Mr Peter Turvey to the Board of Directors. Mr Turvey recently retired from CSL (ASX:CSL) as Executive Vice President Licensing for the R&D Division and Company Secretary after nearly two decades.

Mr Turvey brings to the Starpharma Board exceptional commercial licensing skills having worked at CSL since 1992 in various roles including Group General Counsel, Company Secretary and Executive Vice President Licensing.
Mr Turvey played a key role in the transformation of CSL from a government owned enterprise, through listing in 1994, to a global plasma and biopharmaceutical company. He led the management of CSL’s intellectual property across CSL’s entire operations, managing a large patent portfolio, and a global intellectual property team.

Among the many licensing deals he was involved with, the most significant included the Gardasil license to Merck & Co., the licensing of the Iscomatrix® adjuvant platform technology to the world’s leading vaccine manufacturers, and establishment of the P.gingivalis vaccine technology collaboration between the CRC for Oral Health and Sanofi-Pasteur.

With a strong partnering model at the core of Starpharma’s product development and with multiple products nearing market, Mr Turvey’s skills and experience will be invaluable to the Board and Management of Starpharma.
Chairman of the Board, Mr Peter Bartels said: “We are very pleased to welcome Peter to the Board of Starpharma and believe his skills and experience are highly complementary to that of our existing board. We welcome Peter’s experience and industry insights as we near the final stages of commercialisation for many of our products.”

Mr Turvey added: “Since retiring from CSL, I was keen to remain active in a leading biopharmaceutical company and was excited and impressed at the depth and breadth of the Starpharma portfolio, the company’s Management Team and significant opportunity to contribute to this business at a time where there are multiple market opportunities.

"I think the Board and Management have done a wonderful job to date to set the Company up for great success and I really look forward to contributing to that ongoing success."

Mr Turvey was appointed to the Board of AusBiotech last year and has also recently joined the Foursight Group as a Principal.

The appointment is effective from 19 March 2012.

About Starpharma

Starpharma Holdings Limited (ASX:SPL, OTCQX:SPHRY) is a world leader in the development of dendrimer products for pharmaceutical, life science and other applications.

Starpharma’s underlying technology is built around dendrimers – a type of synthetic nanoscale polymer that is highly regular in size and structure and well suited to pharmaceutical uses. Starpharma has three core development programs: VivaGel® portfolio, drug delivery and agrochemicals with the Company developing a number of products internally and others via commercial partnerships. In addition, products for diagnostics and laboratory reagents are already on market through licence arrangements with partners including Siemens Healthcare and Merck KGaA.

Starpharma’s lead product is VivaGel® (SPL7013 Gel), a gel-based formulation of a proprietary dendrimer. VivaGel® is under clinical development for the treatment and prevention of bacterial vaginosis (BV) and also as a vaginal microbicide to prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted infections including HIV and genital herpes.

Starpharma has also signed separate licence agreements with Ansell Limited (ASX:ANN) and Okamoto Industries Inc (TSE) to market a value-added, VivaGel® -coated condom. Ansell manufactures and sells leading condom brands worldwide, including Lifestyles®, ZERO® and SKYN®. Okamoto is the market leader for condoms sold in Japan, the world’s second largest condom market.

In the wider pharmaceutical and life science fields, Starpharma has both partnered and internal programs in Drug Delivery. Most recently Starpharma announced pre-clinical results in its Docetaxel (Taxotere®) program demonstrating significant improvements in that agent’s anticancer efficacy and the enhancement of solubility offering potential safety benefits as well. The company is also exploring dendrimer opportunities in agrochemicals in a series of industry partnerships as well as with internal programs including an enhanced version of glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup®).